Ed Simon and Charles Dickey on Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks

From Ed Simon's 6-10-24 LITHUB article entitled "In Praise of the Paranormal Curiosity of Charles Fort, Patron Saint of Cranks":

[Charles] Fort developed an entirely new category, distinct from the occult. Unlike belief in magic and miracles, Fort’s interest in so-called anomalies depended on the authority of science, that which he was ostensibly often in conflict with. What he posited wasn’t the ability to divinely alter reality through incantation and conjuration, but rather of something scientifically discernible beyond the normal, beyond the natural. In four odd volumes including The Book of the Damned, New Lands in 1925, Lo! In 1931, and Wild Talents in 1932, Fort would invent that mode of thinking that goes beyond the normal and the natural, which is to say that this jocular New York journalist is the father of the paranormal and the supernatural.

To read Simon's entire article, click HERE. 

From Charles Dickey's 7-16-24 CHRONICLE article entitled "The Scholar Who Inspired a Legion of Cranks: The Vexed Legacy of Charles Fort":

Fort’s The Book of the Damned remains a remarkable work. But Fort was a gadfly, not a prophet. Lionizing him — as Thayer and others have tried to do for the last century — is as problematic as marginalizing him. Perhaps the appropriate attitude toward Fort is to treat his writing as he treated the anomalous facts he uncovered: with seriousness and wonder, but also with a savage and relentless skepticism. His ultimate gift was not to get us to think to new worlds, but to scrutinize our own more closely.

To read Dickey's entire article, click HERE.